Rookie Decisions: Dougie Hamilton Sticks with Boston Bruins

By Emma Harger

Greg M. Cooper – USA TODAY Sports

About half an hour before the Boston Bruins are set to take on the Carolina Hurricanes, team general manager Peter Chiarelli convened a press conference at Raleigh’s PNC Arena to announce something that, to many Bruins fans, may seem obvious: Dougie Hamilton is going to stay with the team.

Hamilton had already played four games with the Bruins, so he was just about to hit the point at which junior-age players have to either be sent back to their junior team or go ahead and play their first year. But long before the lockout began, Hamilton’s coach in Niagara said he didn’t expect to see his young charge come back to the IceDogs. Of course, he ended up doing just that, but only because he wasn’t able to go to the AHL yet.

The young, tall defenseman already has three assists in his four Bruins games played, including a two-point game on Jan. 25 against the New York Islanders. That night, the TD Garden crowd even started chanting his name in appreciation.

It would have been a very bad decision indeed if Hamilton had been sent back to Niagara, so Chiarelli and his crew made the right choice here. Hamilton is already getting accustomed to playing in Boston and being part of the team, after all–he’s been to a basketball game with Brad Marchand and Tyler Seguin, plus he is road roommates with Seguin, who said that the two of them are the only two single guys on the team.

Hamilton, the winner of the OHL‘s Max Kaminsky Trophy in 2011-12–that league’s equivalent of the Norris Trophy–and bronze medalist from the 2012 World Junior Championship, is coming off a 72-point campaign last season and has often been paired with Dennis Seidenberg during Bruins game action.